Bathore
Pastor Fatmir Macaj
Mission
To make disciples of Jesus Christ who serve responsibly in the local church and produce other local churches according to God’s leading.
Vision
We meet as a church family on Sunday mornings for worship, prayer, fellowship, and preaching from God’s Word. Wednesday night meetings focus on prayer and encouragement. Our desire is to see entire families reached for Christ, which is why we have developed outreaches targeting each age group.
Needs
A new meeting place in the area we are serving with suitable space for our weekly ministries among the various groups, including an office and parking space.
A young missionary couple to develop more the students group. Our location is very close to the The Agricultural University of Tirana (Albanian: Universiteti Bujqësor i Tiranës). This is a public university of Albania. It offers education in agronomy, veterinary science, forestry, ecology, agribusiness, and similar subjects. The government is also expanding their capacity for other branches of education. Some new dormitory buildings are finished and more are under construction, which will be able to offer residence maybe thousands of students in the near future, giving amazing opportunities to reach Albanian souls for Christ.
History of the Church Bathore
Kamza, including the area of Bathore, is located about 5 miles north of the capital of Tirana. This area of 14.4 square miles is home to some 150,000 residents, a large portion of which are considerably young – some sources report that over a third of the city is under 15 years old. Until the 1990's the area was mostly unpopulated, followed by rapid growth as families immigrated from the north to settle in the valley of Kamza. The religious demographic is divided between Muslim and Catholic.
In 2012 a few women from the church in Tirana (KBBT) began to work with widows in the area of Bathore. They offered sewing courses and met various practical needs of their families, especially for their children. Along with meeting physical needs, they organized periodic evangelistic services. In 2015, KBBT saw the need to develop this ministry further and appointed Fatmir Macaj, along with his family, to explore the possibility of planting a church. During that time, Fatmir had been praying for God’s will concerning the possibility of moving to extend the mission of the church to a new area. The Lord led and encouraged him to pick up and continue this work that the Lord had started in Bathore. For Easter Sunday, 2015, a large evangelistic service was organized in the community, and the hand of the Lord was evident in this endeavor. Following Easter, children’s meetings were organized every Saturday morning, which produced fruit that still remains. Evangelistic services were held periodically resulting in growing interest and salvation among all age groups. In November of that year, regular Sunday services were started, and Fatmir was officially ordained as a pastor and sent out, along with his family, from Tirana Bible Baptist Church (KBBT) for the ministry of the Lord. Many volunteers from KBBT helped for periods of time to reach various age groups – teenagers, college students, women, and men in the community. The Lord brought about fruit from their efforts and established it, forming the first church in the larger area of Kamza to be planted after the biblical model of the church of Antioch (Acts 13:1-4). The mission continues.
Church Activities
Every Saturday morning we put on a 2-3 hour children’s program consisting of Bible stories, worship songs, Scripture memory, active games, crafts, dramatizations, and a snack. Once a month we take a field trip to various locations such as the city zoo, the children’s theater, sports activities, etc. We organize special programs on holidays, as they are unique opportunities to reach larger portions of the community. The year-long ministry culminates in Summer Camp, a highlight that we all look forward to, and which God has blessed immensely over the years. We are burdened to lay an early foundation in the lives of the children that God has entrusted to us so that they will grow to love, trust, and follow Him. Children’s ministry also becomes the first “mission field” for young growing disciples. Seven young adults who were served through the children’s ministry are now serving and carrying a bulk of the workload.
Youth Group, ages 12-17, meets every Friday after school. The program consists of worship, preaching, Bible quizzing, English lessons, active games, and a time of food and fellowship. Additional sports activities are organized outside the church periodically. Summer Camp is a significant outreach of this ministry as well, giving the teenagers a unique opportunity to invite friends and cousins to hear the Gospel. The teenagers enjoy preparing truth-saturated plays and dramas for camp and special events throughout the year. The messages brought by the pastor along with Bible quizzing are intended to help young believers develop a love and dependence on God’s Word as they enter an evermore complicated society.
The ministry to college students has utilized many tools over the years including sports, math and English classes, and special events on holidays. We meet once a month at the church for worship, games, and preaching that addresses topics most relevant to this age group. A handful of these students have grown up in church and are in the process of discipleship or Bible School, while the other portion is unsaved and unchurched. We are praying that God would direct us to meet the spiritual needs of both groups and enable us to expand this ministry to reach the hundreds of unreached students attending the local university nearby.
The women’s ministry, which serves to supplement the regular Sunday and Wednesday meetings, has a special meeting once a month for the purpose of encouraging believing women and reaching the unsaved. A handful of these women are being discipled by older women in the church. The majority of the women do not have believing husbands which adds to the challenges of following Christ. Sewing courses have brought us into contact with many new women recently, and children from our Saturday outreach are often the ones to bring their moms to church for the first time.
The men’s outreach group is growing as there are 17 men, some of which attend church and the rest we are continuing to foster friendships, with one meeting per month where we spend time sharing the love of God with them.
The majority of the men we are trying to reach are the fathers and husbands of believing women and children in the church. Deeply ingrained cultural attitudes often keep men from even entering the church building for a long period of time. Years of friendship and sincerity on our part, as well as the testimony of a living faith displayed by their believing family members, have helped to soften such attitudes.
An intentional focus of our local church is one-on-one discipleship. Through a program of 21 lessons, believers are encouraged to develop a personal relationship with God, grounded in Biblical truth, strengthened by disciplines of spiritual growth, resulting by God’s grace in a living faith that actively serves and shares Christ. As these disciples are found to be faithful, Bible School is an additional tool to aid in their growth. We have developed two Bible School classes up to this point.